Abstract

The crystallization times of Ge–Te phase changematerials with variable Ge concentrations (29.5–72.4 at. %) were studied. A very strong dependence of the crystallization time on the composition for as-deposited, amorphous films was confirmed, with a minimum for the stoichiometric composition GeTe. The dependence is weaker for melt-quenched, amorphous material and crystallization times are between one to almost four orders of magnitude shorter than for as-deposited materials. This is promising for applications because recrystallization from the melt-quenched phase is the relevant process for optical and solid state memory, and fast crystallization and weak dependence on compositional variations are desirable.

Received 16 June 2009Accepted 01 August 2009Published online 21 August 2009

Acknowledgments:

The authors would like to thank Andrew Kellock for Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy measurements. M.A.C. acknowledges support from the IBM Graduate Student Fellowship and the Stanford Non-Volatile Memory Technology Research Initiative (NMTRI).